Agony

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Agony

Paperback

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Overview

ENJOY THE ECSTASY OF AGONY. Amy and Jordan are just like us: hoping for the best, even when things go from bad to worse. They are menaced by bears, beheaded by ghosts, and hunted by the cops, but still they struggle on, bickering and reconciling, scraping together the rent and trying to find a decent movie. It’s the perfect solace for anxious modern minds, courtesy of one of the great innovators of American comics. Now if only Amy’s skin would grow back ...

This NYRC edition features a recreation of the original, pocket-size, slipcovered paperback, designed by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly.

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About the Author

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781590179819
Publisher:	New York Review Books
Publication date:	03/22/2016
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 4.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Mark Beyer is a self-taught artist who began making comics in 1975. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, and many other publications, and was a mainstay of RAW magazine. He created a series of animated shorts for MTV’s Liquid Television, designed album covers for John Zorn, and collaborated with Alan Moore. Amy and Jordan, the stars of his graphic novel Agony, were also featured in a newspaper strip that ran from 1988 to 1996, and which was collected in Amy and Jordan in 2004. His paintings and drawings have been exhibited around the world, including in Europe, Japan, and the United States.

Colson Whitehead is the author of five novels, including Zone One, Sag Harbor, and The Intuitionist. His latest book is The Noble Hustle, a nonfiction account of the 2011 World Series of Poker. He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Fellowship.

From the B&N Reads Blog

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Editorial Reviews

Mark Beyer's Amy and Jordan was one of the great underground comic strips of the late '80s and early '90s—the Candide-on-PCP misadventures of a seemingly accursed New York City couple…Initially published in 1987, the sour little gem Agony is the only book-length Amy-and-Jordan story. As Colson Whitehead's introduction to the new edition suggests, it's hilarious if you're in the right mood for its gleeful parade of atrocities and deadpan expository dialogue…

The New York Times Book Review - Douglas Wolk

★ 02/22/2016
Almost childlike in its energy and lack of story logic, this is a charming explosion of grotesque comedic misfortune, exactly as the title promises. Abstract doodles Amy and Jordan careen at breakneck pace through a slapstick series of bad things, including horrible diseases, a stint in jail, terrible jobs, battles with murderers, and various other calamities; the pace jumps from incident to incident thanks to between-the-panel miracles and expository dialogue. Through it all, the pair manages to keep their chins up mostly, barring a few descents into the abyss on Amy’s part, which is understandable since she bears the brunt of the physical pain. Originally a one-shot from Raw Books in 1987, complete with Spiegelman and Mouly design work, Beyer’s calamitous comedy has aged well, its geometric, densely patterned imagery recalling fine art as much as comics and still packing a punch among today’s alternative cartoonists. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Mark Beyer’s 'Amy and Jordan' was one of the great underground comic strips of the late ’80s and early ’90s—the Candide-on-PCP misadventures of a seemingly accursed New York City couple.” —Douglas Wolk, The New York Times Book Review

"Almost childlike in its energy and lack of story logic, this is a charming explosion of grotesque comedic misfortune, exactly as the title promises ... Beyer’s calamitous comedy has aged well, its geometric, densely patterned imagery recalling fine art as much as comics and still packing a punch among today’s alternative cartoonists.” —Publishers Weekly, PW Picks

"Exquisitely, gleefully hopeless." —The A. V. Club

"I couldn’t get enough of their misery: I finished it in one sitting and flipped back to the beginning.” —The Paris Review Daily Blog

"Mark Beyer’s Agony is a highlight of the 80s art comics movement ... Now available in a new edition as the first release of the New York Review Comics line, the abstract, absurd, and bleakly funny comic book returns, and it’s just as oddly beautiful and relevant as ever. ... Throughout Agony, Beyer’s artwork is odd, alienating, and remarkably effective. A self-taught artist whose work could easily be classified as outsider, raw, brut, or naïve art, Beyer strikes a balance between simple, even childlike figure-work supported by a very dynamic and complex design."— Comics Alliance

"Gorgeously madcap and brutally inspiring.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Agony by Mark Beyer is an otherworldly pocket-sized jewel that’s bound to be rediscovered.” —Blouin Artinfo

“Beyer’s work is universal at its heart ... One of the masters of the form.” —Publishers Weekly

“Mark Beyer’s are some of my favorite comics of all time, and surely the most perfectly realized vision of urban despair ever to hit the comic page. A must for any fan of bleakness and misery." —Daniel Clowes

“He’s one of the flukiest geniuses in comics." —L.A. Weekly

“Exquisite poems of urban despair, dreamy and nightmarish.” —Chip Kidd

“Perhaps the ultimate urban nightmare comic ... Mark Beyer [is] not only an extremely funny cartoonist, but one of the most progressive as well.” —Time

“A childhood hell palpitating with adult neuroses.” —The Village Voice

“Beyer’s seminal strip is a terrifying New York of the mind.” —Dash Shaw

“I hope Mark Beyer’s work will find a place in the canon ... A treasure of the comics medium.” —The Millions

“A complete and total original.” —Kaz

“[A]n exemplar of [the] eighties ‘alternative' comics movement. ... Agony is a book filled with pain, misery, brutality, and hopelessness, but our unexpected laughter reminds us that we must carry on, regardless.”—Ivan Brunetti, The Paris Review Daily

From the Publisher

2016-02-04
Two misfits try to stay positive as they stumble through a series of outlandishly unfortunate events in this reissue of Beyer's (Amy and Jordan, 2004) alt-comic classic. Amy and Jordan are best friends, roommates, and cohorts in suffering. Their misfortunes begin mundanely enough—simultaneously fired from the same company, disappointed by the movie they hoped would lift their spirits—but quickly escalate to surreal with Amy's beheading by "some hideous ghoul creature." Jordan recovers Amy's noggin inside the belly of a giant fish, though he loses his legs diving through the creature's snapping jaws. Nevertheless, aquarium staff free Jordan and Amy's head, and a few weeks in the hospital bring full recoveries to both. Next, the two travel to a remote island to live with its primitive inhabitants and hopefully never worry about jobs again—which results in wholesale slaughter and catastrophe. Amy and Jordan survive, thanks to the inexplicable help of a massive beast, but exposure to toxins during the catastrophe strips away Amy's flesh, leaving her a ghastly—but living—"human skeleton." Like a daisy chain of calamity the cycle stretches: Amy and Jordan strive for betterment only to be viciously struck down by capricious fate, whose same fickle finger ultimately flicks them back up—and onto the next mishap, from lame dinner party to prison sentence to a voyage across the sea. Beyer wastes no panels, propelling the story with the manic energy, abrupt transitions, and frank, expository dialogue of children's doodles—an association underscored by his images' flat, geometric appearance. But this simple aesthetic belies the work's complexity, as Beyer packs frames with a riot of bold lines, stacked patterns, and rich stippling, ensnaring and rewarding the gaze wherever it falls. His pair's earnest striving amid relentless, absurd tribulations strikes a universal chord: "We've just got to keep trying harder," says Jordan. "It's a struggle, but what else can we do?" Gorgeously madcap and brutally inspiring.

Kirkus Reviews

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